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Deviled Rabbit
Cut a rabbit into joints and parboil them; when they are entirely cold, score them to the bone, making the cuts about one-half inch apart. Melt over the fire three ounces of butter, mix with it a little cayenne pepper, salt and mustard, one tablespoonful of vinegar, and one teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce; stir all this well together, rub each piece of rabbit with it, rubbing it thoroughly into the scoring, and broil them on a hot gridiron over a clear, brisk fire, turning the pieces as soon as they commence to drip. When they are brown pile them on a hot dish, melt some butter, and pour it over. Allow them to lie in this for three or four minutes, turning them often. If any of the mixture is left pour it over, and serve.
Fillets of Rabbit, Valencienne Style Skin the rabbits, cut the fillets from the bones, and if large cut each fillet into halves, trim them to the shape of a small cutlet, beat them, place them in a well-buttered sautepan, squeeze the juice of a lemon over, sprinkle them over with pepper and salt, and stand them over a moderate fire, turning them when cooked on one side, and finishing the other. The fillets should not be browned. When quite firm arrange them in a circle on a hot dish. Pour a little more than one pint of sauce into the sautepan, with one breakfast cupful of white stock, stir it over the fire, and reduce it until it adheres to the back of a spoon; then stir in one-half teacupful of cream, and a small quantity of lemon juice, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour the sauce over the fillets, and serve.
Two rabbit preparations run together in one entry: a devilled broil and a poached fillet in cream sauce. Both assume a cook who knows the animal is lean and unforgiving of overcooking.
- The hinge: score before the fat goes onThe cuts to the bone at half-inch intervals are what makes this dish work — they let the mustard-cayenne butter reach the interior of a very lean meat that has no fat of its own to carry seasoning. Rub the paste hard into the scoring rather than brushing it over the surface.
- Parboil, then cool completelyFifteen to twenty minutes at a bare simmer should be enough for saddle and forelegs; hind legs of an older animal want longer. The instruction to let the joints go entirely cold is not fussiness — warm rabbit is harder to score cleanly, and the butter is more likely to run off.
- Rabbit size and yieldA farmed rabbit runs 2.5-3 lb dressed and serves two, perhaps three. Wild rabbit is smaller, leaner and tougher, and benefits from the longer parboil. The devilled version makes a good deal of one animal.
- Gridiron and fireA "clear, brisk fire" means glowing coals with no flame — call it a hot grill or a broiler element at full heat, with the meat 4 inches away. Turn as soon as the butter starts to drip, or the drippings flare and the mustard scorches bitter.
- DonenessRabbit is best pulled at 160F at the thickest part of the leg. It dries out fast past that; the second bath of melted butter at the end is there partly to compensate for a piece that has gone a little far.
- Cup measures in the second recipeA breakfast cupful is roughly 8-10 fl oz — treat it as one cup of stock. A teacupful is smaller, around 5-6 fl oz, so half a teacupful of cream is about 1/3 cup.
- "One pint of sauce" is unspecifiedOscar assumes a kitchen with velouté standing by; the recipe never says which sauce. A light chicken or veal velouté is the sensible reading. Note that a pint of sauce plus a cup of stock reduced hard is a great deal of liquid for the fillets of two rabbits — halve it unless you are feeding a table.
- Keep the fillets paleTrimmed and beaten to cutlet thinness, the saddle fillets cook through in a few minutes a side in butter over moderate heat. The recipe expressly says they should not be browned, so keep the pan below colouring heat.
Devilling — scoring cooked meat, working in a hot paste of mustard, cayenne and something sharp, then grilling it — was a British device of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for using up cold roast or boiled meat, and it reached American hotel kitchens as a supper and chafing-dish standard. Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf ran on French service, but its menus carried a strong English club-food undercurrent, and dishes of the devilled bones, devilled kidneys and devilled poultry sort would have sat comfortably beside the veloutés. Rabbit itself was unremarkable in a 1896 American kitchen: it appeared in markets seasonally as game, chiefly wild, cheap enough to be everyday and lean enough that cooks reached for butter at every stage. The paired "Valencienne Style" fillets show the other half of the house's range — the same animal broken down to its two loin fillets and finished in a reduced cream sauce, which is a far more expensive way to eat a rabbit and leaves the rest of it for the stockpot.